Mollie Jessett

Look at Us, 2021, Ink, bleach and digital edit. 29.7 x 42 cm

Image description: The image contains a crowd of four figures that overlay and intersect one another. Each figure is posing as if taking a mirror selfie. Their phones have a simple design of an eye where the camera is usually placed. Although the colour palette of this image is a deep monochrome, each figure has bold red painted nails. Behind the crowd of figures uses a similar colour palette yet in a whirled almost hypnotic effect.

As an artist, I work with mixed media mostly with painting and photography. My current practice focuses on painting with ink and using bleach to distort, erode, and create blotched painting effects. I further edit each figure using a digital process. My figures stem from a cultural interest in how humans are redefining their relationship to themselves and others through self-portraiture uploaded onto social media sites. Contrasting from the usual air-brushed bodies presented on sites like Instagram, my crowd of bodies celebrate their flawed skin in illustrative and empowering way.

Each body reveal their breast tissue yet disclose their genitals, intending to confront the significance of the reproductive organs in which to be considered man or woman. The figures maintain a playful combination of binary codes of gender involving thick body hair among monstrous, red nails. The theme of the phone with the eye within my portraits are a reference to the awareness of seeing and being seen.

Instagram: @mollie_jessett_art

Email: jessett_mollie@yahoo.co.uk